Thursday, 23 October 2008

Can anyone not trained in education create a sex and RE syllabus and sell it to the government?

Here is one I have just devised.

THE 15 KEY AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE:

1. what the Abrahamic religions say about extra-marital and recreational sex (integrated with the study of Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Romans, the Koran where it mentions the punishment of adultery and homosexuality)

2. why they say what they say about extra-marital and recreational sex

3. why adultery could be considered qualitatively similar to homosexuality (being recreational and extra-marital sex) because of the way it is treated and punished in the Old Testament - both incur the penalty of death by stoning.

4. why adultery (caused by the deadly sin of lust) was considered injurious to society (It breaks up families and impoverishes the next generation as can be seen in the decline of Britain as a nation. British employers prefer foreign labour disgruntling the indigent indigenous who are less qualified because of the substandard education they received from state schools. State schools are educationally-crippled by the need to deal with the disruptive and unsocialised behavour of the illegitimate CHAVs who are in the majority in state schools. State schools then dumb down, causing a vicious circle of yet faster decline and yet deeper degradation. All this leads inevitably to the rise of the BNP.)

5. why homosexuality was considered a sin (the Kantian categorical imperative would demonstrate that homosexuality, if universalised, would result in the extinction of humanity) Without heterosexuals, there would be no homosexuals.

6. the natural role of men as competitors for female favours

7. the natural role of women as prizes and trophies to choose the man most worthy of her partnership and not to give of herself too freely

8. discussion of Shaw's adage: "The difference between marriage and prostitution is the difference between trade unionism and unorganised casual labour."

9. whether the prostitute who offers sex for money is morally superior to the woman who gives casual sex freely (The former provides an outlet for the release of sexual urges and has a certain societal function, the latter cheapens herself and the value of other women, risks unwanted pregnancy and illegitimate offspring, degrading the next generation.)

10. marriage as a gender-apportioned division of labour for the raising of offspring together (Reference will be made to Adam Smith's economic theories on specialisation and division of labour resulting in greater efficiencies.)

11. the consequences of unplanned pregnancy - man will be chased by Child Support Agency, woman will have her life chances diminished, for no man really wants to share a roof with another man's offspring (especially if they are badly brought up and they tend to be if the father is not around) and would inevitably prefer a woman who is free of biological "baggage"

12. a reminder that the age of consent is 16, ie GCSE age and a discussion of why it was once younger and why it was raised and why subsequently ignored

13. Who should one have sex with? (People we think we love is the minimum requirement, people we think love us is the next requirement, someone whom we love and who loves us is of course the ideal.)

14. The commodification of sex. Men as consumers are usually not that fussy because they use a scattergun approach to procreation. Women who are the providers of sex ought to be fussier for their own protection, because they are the first sufferers of unwanted pregnancy by a man who does not wish to become a husband and prove to be a good father

15. why ignorance of the 15 points leads to decline and fall when enough generations have been economically, spiritually, intellectually and morally impoverished, and the meaning of res ipsa loquitur

If you are not old enough to write an essay discussing these points sensibly, you are not old enough to have sex.

Last month, I turned 40. I didn't have a big celebration because, being single, I couldn't face dancing with my friends' well-meaning husbands all night.

I never envisaged that at my 40th, not only would I not have a partner, but I wouldn't even have a date. When I waltzed out of Oxford University nearly 20 years ago, throbbing with a sense of my potential, this wasn't what I had in mind at all.

But now, taking stock, I can see that while my career as a writer has flourished, I have floundered massively in the relationship stakes. My romantic CV makes shockingly depressing reading - I was married at 32, divorced by 34, became pregnant by a new partner at 36 and was left by him as a single mother at 38.

Hardly surprisingly, I've been too scared for the past two years to risk more than the odd date because I am terrified of not getting it right - again.

However, recently it has struck me that I am not alone in my ability to have made the right career choices - but hopelessly wrong choices in love.

I know of at least seven girls in my year at school - I went to St Paul's Girls' School in London, one of the most academic schools in the country - who are single mothers, while my female friends from Oxford, who are also divorced or single mothers, runs into double figures.

The most high-profile casualty of those is Earl Spencer's ex-wife, Caroline Hutton, who was famously left with two children by her first husband, PR guru Matthew Freud, and then left again with two more children by her second husband, Earl Spencer. Not, it seems, the perfect judge of men.

So what does all this mean? Well, I believe that at the root of all this is the fact that many women with a high IQ have a perilously low EQ (that's their emotional intelligence quotient). Put more prosaically, this would explain why bright girls are often fools in love.

Last year, American writer Michael Noer created outrage when he wrote a piece in Forbes Magazine warning men off marrying career girls. He claimed that recent studies had found that clever, professional women were more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children.

Simultaneously, the American Journal Of Marriage And Family cited studies that claim the divorce risk rises when women out-earn their husbands. Evidence, everywhere, seems to point to the fact that thousands of bright women can't sustain meaningful relationships for a plethora of reasons: they are too controlling, they can't tolerate less successful men and equally, men resent higher-earning partners.

But perhaps we are missing something more fundamental - and controversial. That the intrinsic emotional make-up of women with an over-developed intellect is flawed, and as a result their ability to choose compatible partners or sustain lasting relationships is impeded?

Dr Robert Holden, author of Success Intelligence, is at the cutting edge of psychological relationship research. He explains: "IQ is all to do with your head and the meeting of minds. You could have two incredibly intellectual sparky people who know how to stimulate each other with a fantastic debate, but this in no way means they have what it takes for a long-term relationship.

"To have a successful relationship, you have to have a developed EQ which is emotional empathy and a respect for each other's feelings."

So why is it that intellectually smart women get derailed when it comes to relationships?

"It happens because the logic of emotions is different to the logic of thoughts," explains Holden.

"With a high IQ, we are often so headstrong that we over-ride what our heart is feeling. We essentially silence our emotions.

"Without the engagement of the head and the heart, relationships are not a safe place to be, but the bright woman is headstrong enough to tell herself that she will be able to make this work."

In other words, we fall at the first hurdle because we override our gut instinct. I ignored to my cost the warning bells pealing daily the week before my wedding eight years ago, only to realise finally on my honeymoon with pulverising clarity that I had married the wrong man.

Equally, I initially resisted a relationship with my daughter's father because he was seven years younger than me, but then allowed myself, again against my better judgment, to acquiesce.

Cambridge graduate and banker Sarah Harries, 42, a divorced mother of two who was married for nine years says: "When I married, I kind of knew in the back of my mind that it wouldn't work out, but I convinced myself that I could make it work.

"I've heard so many divorced women say that at some level they knew, but bright girls override their instinct with intellect and it gets us into trouble."

Harries admits that she puts her intellect before her feelings and has recently realised how much damage this has caused her relationships.

"After my divorce, four years ago, I've had two relationships where the signals I gave were at complete odds to what I was feeling. I would say: "I don't want you to meet my children and I'm seeing other men so I don't want you to get too close".

"I gave off all these signals that I was this financially self-sufficient woman who had her kids and career and basically all I needed a man for was sex.

"That is incredibly emasculating, so when the man responded by being detached, my emotional side kicked in and I thought, "why isn't he falling in love with me?"

"I got very confused when my emotional side came to the fore and I started getting attached.'

Another emotional disability that bright girls, myself included, suffer from is low self-esteem.

Career girls are adept at appearing confident and are often hideously controlling, which is really to disguise our great fear of being out of control. Intimacy means a higher potential for rejection and the risk of being hurt.

"And being hurt means our feelings are forced to the surface and we have to deal with them, which is painful and scary.

"Often, people with a high IQ lack a genuine sense of self-acceptance which leads to a very tortured mental existence and constant mental self-flagellation,' explains Dr Holden (I certainly relate to all counts).

"What we know is that there is no correlation between a high IQ and happiness,' he continues. 'If anything, your IQ might mean you are prone to being more judgmental than normal, and, therefore, you have more fear and anxiety in relationships than the average person.

"In general terms, it means that having a higher IQ doesn't help you make better emotional decisions."

Another alumni of St Paul's Girls' School, Kira Jolliffe, 37, exemplifies this. A renowned style guru and author, she is also a wardrobe consultant to London's fashionistas, who has excelled in her career.

However, she has yet to experience a successful relationship. Married at 28 to a rock musician, she left him after two years for another musician.

"I left because there was no love there and he didn't stimulate me," she says.

Four years ago, she had a daughter with a contemporary art writer and the relationship ended two years later.

"That relationship didn't work because we rushed into it too quickly without knowing each other," she confesses.

"My choice of partners has always been a reaction to the last one, so it has been intellectually based, in the sense that I was calculating in selecting a man to override the memory of the last one.

"The problem with making a decision on an intellectual basis is that it is all at a cerebral level and you don't take in the full person. So when the emotional nature of a deeper relationship comes to the fore, you don't know how to handle it.

"My sense of failure when I split up from my father's child was horrendous because it was the first time I woke up to the fact that I had a more general problem, and that I was getting personal things wrong.

"Recently, I've realised that I had to confront my emotions instead of being scared of them and always trying to detach from them."

So what advice does Dr Holden give to successful career women who are often (secretly) unhappy and unsuccessful in love?

"The IQ is the stuff to watch for," he says. "Where you are too smart for your own good and have a plan of what Mr Right looks like. Women like that try to approach love like they approach their careers - as an academic exercise.

"Sometimes you've got to drop your cast-iron pride and be willing to admit you've got it entirely wrong for Mr Right to show up at all.

"Don't be too quick; too quick to dismiss someone because they don't know who ruled the Byzantine Empire, or too quick to give yourself entirely to someone just because they laughed at your joke.

"Don't be too dominant or competitive because that leads to short-term safety and long-term boredom. Finally, develop your EQ. Learn to have emotional strength which is about yielding, surrender, openness and a willingness to be vulnerable.

"This is absolutely vital, because it determines the quality of your relationships with others. It is unreasonable to expect other people to love you more than you love yourself."

Sarah Harries recently started a new relationship and agrees: "For the first time, I've been trying to engage my emotional side by being honest about what I'm feeling and showing vulnerability. Let's face it, none of us clever girls are very happy, are we?

"Often we are the real victims because we can argue to ourselves that any romantic situation is OK, when in reality it's not.

"I allowed my ex-husband to undermine me because I didn't feel the emotional side of my life was important enough for me to demand more from him.

"For too long, women like me have failed to recognise that the emotional side of life is important. But I think that now, in our 30s and 40s, my generation is waking up to the fact that it's increasingly becoming a lifeline to happiness."

What a shame it's taken so many years for all these high-flying and brilliant women to work out that a big brain does not guarantee lasting love - in fact, quite the opposite.

Comments (4)

Often intelligent, career women are brain-washed into thinking that they can always get a man later if they put off marriage and children until after their careers take off. But the reality is that the available best men have already been snapped up, and all the career woman is left to pick from in her 30s are a bunch of losers, commitment-phobic men, and other womens' discarded disasters!- Mary, Manchester , England, UK, 07/8/2007 01:51

"Recent studies had found that clever, professional women were more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children." Don't believe it, not true! I was a great mother, not a career woman, fairly clever but not professional. I didn't cheat and I had two beautiful children. My ex husband still divorced me!- Smileyrose, UK, 07/8/2007 01:47

Well, this theory certainly does not apply to all intelligent women. I have a high IQ (Mensa level) but if anything, my EQ is higher, because I was raised in a warm, caring, loving family. And I've been happily married for many years, even though for a number of those years I earned more than my husband. The IQ bit is easy - you're born with it. Work on the EQ, it's far more important in relationships, and it opens far more doors in life generally than a high IQ.- Tanya, Lincoln, 07/8/2007 01:42